“Is that so? Another time you can come inside, it’s warmer. You’ve simply got to knock on the door. But loudly, and not while I’m playing. Now⁠—what did you want to say? But you’re quite young, apparently a schoolboy or student. Are you a musician?”

“No. I like music, but only the kind you play, absolute music, where one feels that someone is trying to fathom heaven and hell. I like music so much, I think, because it is not concerned with morals. Everything else is a question of morals, and I am looking for something different. Whatever has been concerned with morals has caused me only suffering. I don’t express myself properly. Do you know that there must be a god who is at the same time god and devil? There must have been one, I have heard so.”

The organist pushed back his broad hat and shook the dark hair from his forehead. He looked at me penetratingly and bent forward his face towards me over the table.

Softly and tensely he questioned:

“What’s the name of the god of whom you are talking?”